Perigee
by Polly Lynn
Summary: "She still loves it. This lightlessness and silence. It still feels like peace, and she wants to stop. She wants to throw open the door and tumble to the ground in. gratitude that she still loves it here. That she still can." Post–For Better or Worse (6 x 23)


Title: Perigee

Rating: T

WC: ~1800

Summary: "She still loves it. This lightlessness and silence. It still feels like peace, and she wants to stop. She wants to throw open the door and tumble to the ground in. gratitude that she still loves it here. That she still can." Post-For Better or Worse (6 x 23)

A/N: I'm a sucker for celestial events and Brain thinks Castle is, too.

* * *

Martha says yes when she finally works up the nerve to call. It's no surprise. Martha always says yes.

"_Darling. Anything. _Anything."

But it draws a laugh this time. Something close, anyway. "Martha, I haven't even asked . . ."

"_Katherine Beckett. As if that matters." _

It doesn't. She asks. The story comes spilling out of her. A plea at the end. So much more than she meant to say, but that's the way it is with Martha.

"_Oh, Kate.__"_ She hears the tears in the older woman's voice. The heaviness that tells her they're not the first today. _"__Of course. Of course.__" _

"It'll be late." She steels herself for this part, then shies away. Falters at the last second. "I won't get on the road until late."

There's silence on the other end. Long and absolute.

"Martha?"

"_Yes, dear. The road . . . you'll be careful?" _

The road. _Jesus._

"I'll be careful."

* * *

The drive is dark. Her headlights are brave, fragile things giving light where they can as she travels the long, winding path to the house.

She still loves it. There's a press of relief at her chest. Tears that almost fall, because everything comes with tears now, but she still loves it. This lightlessness and silence. It still feels like peace, and she wants to stop. She wants to throw open the door and tumble to the ground in gratitude that she still loves it here. That she still can.

She keeps on, though. Martha will be worrying and she's sorry for that. Still sorry at how stupid—how _unthinking_—she'd been. Caught up in her own brand of sorrow.

She edges around the last curve.

It takes her breath away. The hulking shape cut out of something blacker than the night itself. Even with just the porch light burning, it takes her breath away.

The door swings open before she's even switched off the ignition. Martha calls her name and patters down the steps. Kate's bag drops to the ground and they're holding each other silently. Tightly. Grief meeting grief in an instant too full for tears.

Martha is the one to untangle their limbs. To take her arm and lead her inside.

There's no moment. Stepping over the threshold from out to in. Martha's voice is in her ear. Her perfume wraps around them both, and she is steady. Practiced enough in being here to carry them both through it.

She's pouring wine. Settling Kate on to a stool in the kitchen and keeping up more than her end of the conversation.

"Alexis?" The name comes from Kate's mouth as if it's suddenly torn from her. It is. By grief and guilt and afterthought, because she has gone so completely from Kate's life that she hadn't even entertained the idea she might be here. Another shattered spirit haunting the dark.

Martha shakes her head. "Still in California. Meredith is stepping up at least."

"Good," Kate says faintly. "That's . . . it's good she has her mother."

"Such as she is." Martha shoots back with a sidelong glance.

Kate presses her lips hard to the rim of her wine glass. It's a grim, shared smile between them. They both feel it. Hard, unkind resentment of a woman whose best isn't good enough for anyone.

A long time and more than a little wine goes by before Martha speaks again.

"You're back at work."

It's a declaration, rather than a question. Kate is grateful for the way Martha takes the burden of confession from her shoulders. The way she leaves it there.

"Just desk duty." She says anyway. An apology she knows Martha isn't asking for. Would never ask for. She's alone in thinking it's a betrayal.

"For now?"

There's an arch to her eyebrow. A rising inflection and her hands are suddenly busy. She won't pry—she'll never ask—but she wants to. It lightens Kate. A sign of life in her.

"For now. Maybe for good." She spins her wine glass. She listens close for the music of crystal ringing against granite. "It's hard, Martha. Everything is hard."

"I know, darling." Martha reaches out to cover her hand. Kate looks up and just for a moment sees every one of the woman's years in the shadows under her eyes. "I know."

* * *

She can't find the bottle. The cellar is dark and musty by design. Built new with the house, but he has to have his "atmosphere." She mutters curses at him as she barks her shins and her fingers come away with splinters.

There's no rhyme or reason to the racks. None without him, anyway. There's history here. Memory and syntax, and she can almost see him slotting bottles away. Making meaning. Writing patchwork stories.

She eases glass into her hand. Bottle after bottle, heavy in her palm. She blows dust away and smooths back peeling labels. Pieces come together. Patterns in small fragments. Some are jokes. Remarkable finds and grocery store vintages sitting cheek by jowl for the pun their names make or some kind of bawdy back-and-forth between the creatures that adorn the labels

Others are time capsules. Placeholders for celebrations yet to come. She smiles at those. She makes herself smile. A classic label, cracked and flaking on a 1942 cabernet side by side with a 1994 blend in a funky bottle that juts out, a 1971 Barolo nestled above. Martha. Alexis. _Him_.

There's a fourth bottle a little apart. _1979. _She knows, though she won't look. She can't.

She runs a fingernail along the ridges on the bottom to hear its music. The dust is thin on it. Thinner than the others, and she wonders how many years.

One for a question asked and answered. Just a year since then. It seems impossible.

Two for the storm, maybe.

Or more than that. He was so certain so early on.

_1. Be with Kate. _

It could be more than that.

She turns before the tears come. She won't find what she's looking for here. She doesn't know _where_ she'll find it. She doesn't know.

She's dropping to the ground before she realizes it. Knees and palms and hard-packed dirt. Dry, heaving sobs that echo off the stone walls.

"Katherine!" She hears the door open at the top of the stairs. She hears Martha's voice and hurrying footsteps. She wants to answer. She wants to. "_Kate_."

She's sitting up, then. She doesn't know how. After the fact memory of something heavy dragging, and she's sorry. She's _sorry, _but Martha hushes her with light, cool hands. Fingers threading her hair behind her ear in a gesture so like his that she's sobbing again when she realizes it is. Mother to son.

"I miss him," she whispers when she can. It might be the first time she's said it out loud. Something so obvious, so _consuming _that her breath might never have reached anyone else's ear before now. "I miss him every second."

"I know, darling." Martha rocks her gently. "Believe me, I know."

"I thought it would be . . . " She struggles with the words, undone by Martha's silent patience. "Here. I thought it would be . . ." She shakes her head. "But it's the same. It's . . ."

"As awful as it can be?" There's a twist to her mouth that isn't quite humorless.

Kate nods. She gulps in one breath, then another. Because that's it. It's as awful as it can be. Every place. Every second. The sobs recede, though she's sore with it. Though her muscles protest when one more catches her off guard.

"You didn't find it?" Martha asks quietly after a while.

Kate shakes her head. Her voice seems to have gone with the tears.

Martha pats her shoulder gently. "Maybe for the best, kiddo. Remember that dreadful Mayan Apocalypse stuff he insisted on?"

She does. A laugh bubbles up in her. A real laugh, shaky and unpracticed. She remembers.

She rises. Turns and turns again among the racks until she finds just the one. Her hand trails down and stops. Certain. She pulls the bottle free. She turns the faded label upward.

_1919. _

She remembers his excitement.

_Found it! A 1919 Chateau Montrose! _

The way he danced through the loft crowing over the iPad.

_A hundred years, Beckett. Nobody__'__s seen a moon like this in a hundred _years!

_Ninety-five_, _Castle. _

But she was swallowing a smile and he knew. She hopes he knew.

_But you'll come, right? _

Hanging over the back of the couch. Giving her puppy-dog eyes.

_It's a _Thursday_, Castle._

_A _Friday, _technically. Friday the thirteenth!_

_Eight_ months_ from now._

_Which gives you plenty of time to ask for the day off. _

A withering look. A kiss and a grin.

_So it's a date, then? _

A sigh. Like she's doing him a favor.

_It's a date. _

She remembers.

* * *

Martha walks with her to the foot of the hill. The moon is huge and golden, hovering over water gone to glass. It's breathtaking. Lonely, even with the waves pounding the beach and Martha's arm through hers.

The cork fights her. The top, at least, is dry and brittle, though there's a stalwart nub that stays intact even when that chips away. She works spiral of the opener carefully down the way he showed her. She hears their voices, snapping back and forth. Laughing and dissolving into a kiss.

She feels the familiar catch of the seal. She holds her breath and reaches for patience she's never had. She rocks the handle gently from side to side. The short plug pulls free, a satisfying, perfect pop lost to the sound of the ocean.

She tips the bottle toward Martha. The older woman hesitates. Relents when Kate nudges the glass dangling by her side. She stops her at no more than a healthy swallow, though.

Kate pours herself the same. She swirls it. Holds it up to the moonlight and breathes it in. She turns to find Martha waiting patiently. Meekly.

She raises her glass. She puts on a brave face. It crumbles instantly.

"I miss him, too, darling." It's more broken than Kate's ever heard. Like her own heart echoing back to her. "Every second."

Kate nods. She swallows hard and raises her glass, but the words won't come. Nothing at all.

Martha touches her own to it. A chime she feels in her fingers, though the wind takes it for its own. "To Richard."

They each down their portion. The wine is a sharp burn down her throat. Fire reaching her belly all at once.

Martha makes her quiet goodnight. She wraps her in a hug that's at once harder and more frail than anything Kate's known from her. She's going, then she turns back.

"I love you, dear." The words are loud and clear. More than enough to overtake the crashing surf. "For myself and for my son."

"I love you, too, Martha." She doesn't bother with the tears sliding down her own cheeks, though she envies Martha her dry eyes. "For me and for him."

Martha makes her way to the top of the hill. She blows a kiss over her shoulder just before she disappears. Kate smiles and catches it in a wave.

She turns back to face the ocean. She sinks to the sand and fills her glass. She carves out a resting place for the bottle. For herself.

She tips her head back. She lifts her face to the honey moon in perigee.

"Hey, Castle." She finds her voice. She speaks out with nothing but the moon and the sea to hear her. No one but him. "Thought we had a date."

* * *

A/N: So, I legitimately meant to mark this complete and intended it as a one-shot. However, as some of you noted, the wages of posting at 4 AM is accidentally marking it as a WIP.

I really want this to stand alone, but I've written something else that's a follow-up of sorts to this. It's actually where I thought this story would go when I started. I am going to mark this complete and post that two-chapter story, "Apsis" separately.


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